I Just Keep Losing Myself
by kayysquared
Summary: It's senior year, and Santana just can't keep up the act anymore.


Once, her mother had told her that it wasn't healthy to bottle up all your emotions. That she should let things out, that it would make her feel better.

Two weeks after that, her mother left for the grocery store and never came home. So emotions? They're kind of like kryptonite to Santana. She doesn't do them anymore. Well, not in front of anyone that is. She has her fair share of emotions. After all, she is a girl, and that's just how girls are. But if you think for a second that she lets people see them, then you've thought wrong. Because showing people emotions means showing weakness, and every time that's happened, something bad has come of it.

So slowly but surely, Santana has created these walls. Nobody gets in, nothing gets out. If she feels like crying, she holds it in until she's safely behind the locked door of her bedroom. If she feels rejected, she drowns it in a bottle of jack. It's simple. Feel something? Find a way to get rid of it. And it worked for years. Fall in love with Puck, and accidentally tell him, then find out he fucked your friend and knocked her up? Break up with him and sleep with half the football team. Sleep with Finn and have him say it meant nothing? Grab a cheeseburger, go home, and watch Cops until your chest stops aching. Constantly watch the man you love choose everyone else but you? Do anything possible to dull the pain.

But recently, nothing has been able to stop the aching. Because that guy she can't seem to quit caring for? Well, he's been hanging out with her a lot. And they're what he calls "bros". He has a girlfriend, and she respects that, even though it takes a lot to not just lean in and kiss him. But the ache? While it's dulled in the past, now it's back, full force. One night, he came over to hang out, and tells her he's staying the night. It's comfortable. Like old times. And Santana starts talking to him about random stuff. Stuff she's never thought about telling anyone before. Stuff people don't know about her, because they only see her as cold, bitchy Santana. She tells him that she's reading this new novel, and he gets this look on his face. He actually asks if she's in to books. And then it hits her. She knows so much about him, and he, along with everyone else, knows nothing about her. Sure, he knows what makes her go crazy in bed, and he knows she loves Chinese food and Bud Light, but he didn't even know she liked to read. So she tells him some more. Like how she sometimes wants to quit cheerleading, and how she wants to be a famous journalist. And he actually freaks out on her. Puck practically yells at her for telling him things, and he asks why she just doesn't tell Brittany or someone else.

But the the truth is, she doesn't want anyone else to know her like she wants him to know her. And while he's grabbing his stuff to leave, the ache has turned in to a crippling throb, and it's washing over her in waves.

She breaks down when she hears the door slam. And she thanks god that it's summer and she won't have to face him in school.

A week later, her father takes her to california, and Santana spends two weeks in the sun, forgetting all about the people in Lima. She cuts her hair to her shoulders, perfects her tan, and even gets a tattoo with her fathers permission. The ache feels like its under control, and she's never been this happy. Part of her wants to stay in Cali forever. Nobody knows the Santana Lopez from McKinley. She doesn't have to pretend here. But at the end of two weeks, she's readjusting her adorable straw fedora and walking through the airport, back in boring Ohio. And she feels the ache creeping back up her chest, but she tries her best to ignore it.

One night, their third night back, she tries to convince her dad to move. When that doesn't work, she asks if she can switch schools. She'd do anything to stay away from the halls that have turned her in to an emotionless robot. She wants to be carefree and happy, and she thinks she can't do that after all the damage she's done at McKinley. Her father ultimately says no, and he tells her that she just needs to be herself no matter what. That's easy for him to say. He hasn't been a cold, soulless bitch for the past three years.

She ignores everyone's phone calls all summer. She'd rather hang out with her huge familia in Lima Heights than have to put on her bitch face again.

The first day back to school is a scary one. Most people know she quit the Cheerios, because she hasn't been at the mandatory summer practices. But today is the first day she'll see everyone again. Except for Brittany, who saw her two days ago. She spent way too much money on clothes, but this was her first year not wearing a uniform every day, so Santana knew she needed to dress to impress. Her hair is lightly curled, and held back by this awesome headband she got in California, and her feet are encased in a pair of electric blue heels that she knows will hurt by the end of the day, but she needs to look good. Her tattoo peeps out of the back of her dress since the straps are skinny, and she knows she'll be asked what the bird flying out of the cage means. She probably won't answer, they won't understand.

When the tardy bell rings, she gets out of her car and tries her best to walk with the same confidence the red uniform once gave her. But on the inside, she's absolutely terrified of what people might say.

She gets through the first half of the day with questioning glances and nosy questions, but her seventh period class is what might break her. It's history, with Puck, Quinn, and Finn, and she just knows that they'll lead the Spanish inquisition on her. She's saved by first day assigned seating, thankfully. But when she's yanked back in to the classroom by her backpack when class is over, she knows it's coming. Their questions start off easy enough. Where we're you all summer? Why didn't you talk to anyone? Why did you get a tattoo? But the whole time, Puck is silent, and he's staring at her like she's suddenly the most interesting thing in the world. Like he's trying to solve the Santana puzzle.

She escapes them easily and finishes out her day, her heart aching as she passes the choir room on her way out. She'll miss singing, but she can't risk being in the same room as all of them when she's trying her best to keep herself together. She briefly wonders how she'll survive the school year, or if this will get easier with time.

Two weeks later, her father calls to her from downstairs, saying she has a visitor. She's used to the glee kids dropping by, and her dad knows to turn them away, to only let Brittany in. But he doesn't call when Brittany is there, so she wonders who it could be.

Waiting in her foyer is Puck. And he's staring at her like she's a puzzle he can't solve again.

It's unnerving, and she politely asks him to leave. She wants to tell him to run off to his little girlfriend, but they broke up the week before, so she cant. It hurts when he chuckles and asks her when Satan became so soft, so she slaps him.

It came out of nowhere, and her eyes are wide with shock as she looks down at her hand and up at his face. He's shocked too. And she knows she better say something. So she tells him that she's done with pretending. It's her last year of high school, and she's not going to try and fit in anymore. She wants to be herself. No more battling the ache. She wants to dominate it. Squish it down once and for all. And she tells him that once upon a time, she loved him. Lived to be with him. She can tell he's freaking out internally, but he stays in her foyer, listening to her almost yell at him, and it's freeing. She feels the ache, but it doesn't hurt as much.

She's finally just Santana Maria Lopez. A slightly insecure eighteen year old who had her heart broken too many times. She's the girl who loves to read and watch shows about cakes. She's the girl who idolizes Oprah and sings along to Spice Girls in the shower. She's herself, and it's the best feeling in the world.

What shocks her the most is Puck wrapping his arms around her and giving her a bone-crushing hug. And then, when he pulls back a little and kisses her softly, she's really, really shocked. Then he tells her that her ignoring him the whole summer made him realize that he needed her however he could get her, and that he'd messed up by being a dick all this time. He tells her he loves her hair, and that he misses hearing her voice in glee, and that he realized that he'd taken her for granted.

Hours later, he's laying in the grass of her backyard, they're listening to an old mix tape of his, and a familiar REO Speedwagon song starts to play. When he sits up and takes her hand, singing the lyrics to her, she can't help but realize that the ache she'd had all this time has slowly disappeared. Because while he forgot what he was fighting for, she hadn't. And maybe one night didn't mean he'd fall head over heels for her, but having him like this, all carefree and happy, was what she wanted all along. For him to be there for her, and for her to finally love herself enough to completely be there for him, with no ulterior motives.

So maybe their story was just beginning, but her chest no longer hurt, and as her eyes filled with tears of laughter, tears of joy, and he wiped them away, she realized that maybe emotions didn't have to be kryptonite. Because this emotion? This happy, grin-inducing feeling? She doesn't want to get rid of that any time soon.


End file.
